WATCH ABOVE: A Mississauga convenience store owner thwarts off a robbery attempt by hitting the suspect with bananas. Tom Hayes caught up with the owner and the community reaction to her unique method of defence.

The owner of a Mississauga convenience store says when an alleged robber approached her, all she could do was grab the first thing she could find — bananas placed right next to her.

Saungae Kim, co-owner of A&J Convenience, says she didn’t realize it was a robber at first until the man started jumping onto the counter. “I was looking for something to do, but I [saw] the bananas, so I started to hit him with [it].”

At the time, Kim and her husband, Iksoo Kim, who co-owns the store, were working at the front counter together, when a man suddenly walked in and allegedly demanded them to open up their cash register.

“First time [the suspect] was coming, [I thought] it’s a store customer,” he said. Iksoo thought the man was joking when he asked for cash, he said.

But when the suspect kept insisting, Iksoo wondered if there was something wrong. That was when the man started jumping onto the counter in an attempt to reach the register, he said.

“I wasn’t thinking, I just [tried to] push him out my store,” he said.

In the moment, Saungae said she couldn’t think of anything other than trying to find an object that she could use to defend her husband. Conveniently, a batch of bananas was within reach, so she started hitting the man until he stopped climbing the counter, and left.

Thinking back on it, Saungae said it seemed funny, but she’s still scared. “Who knows if he’ll come back?”

Iksoo and his wife have been running their current store for six years. They’ve owned other stores previously and have also had several robbery attempts happen to them. This was the second attempt at their current store, they said.

He describes it as a mom-and-pop shop, and that they’re a husband-and-wife team.

“We have to [stick together], especially at night time, we stay together all the time”